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In 1642 Massachusetts had required parents to ensure their children's ability to read, and five years later, in this act, the state mandated community schooling. -
Massachusetts passed the Old Deluder Satan Act in 1647, laying the basis for public schools in America. The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony decrees that every town of fifty families should have an elementary school and that every town of 100 families should have a Latin school. The goal is to ensure that Puritan children learn to read the Bible and receive basic information about their Calvinist religion. -
Pennsylvania state constitution calls for free public education but only for poor children. It is expected that rich people will pay for their children's schooling. -
New York Public School Society formed by wealthy businessmen to provide education for poor children. Schools are run on the "Lancasterian" model, in which one "master" can teach hundreds of students in a single room. The master gives a rote lesson to the older students, who then pass it down to the younger students. These schools emphasize discipline and obedience qualities that factory owners want in their -
A petition presented in the Boston Town Meeting calls for establishing of a system of free public primary schools. Main support comes from local merchants, businessmen and wealthier artisans. Many wage earners oppose it, because they don't want to pay the taxes. -
First public high school in the U.S., Boston English, opens. -
The percentage of people working in agriculture plummets as family farms are gobbled up by larger agricultural businesses and people are forced to look for work in towns and cities. Owners of industry needed a docile, obedient workforce and look to public schools to provide it.
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Massachusetts passes a law making all grades of public school open to all pupils free of charge. -
Horace Mann becomes head of the newly formed Massachusetts State Board of Education. Edmund Dwight, a major industrialist, thinks a state board of education was so important to factory owners that he offered to supplement the state salary with extra money of his own. -
Massachusetts Reform School at Westboro opens, where children who have refused to attend public schools are sent. This begins a long tradition of "reform schools," which combine the education and juvenile justice systems. -
State of Massachusetts passes first its compulsory education law. The goal is to make sure that the children of poor immigrants get "civilized" and learn obedience and restraint, so they make good workers and don't contribute to social upheaval. -
In 1855 Massachusetts had become the first state to abolish legal segregation; it took yet another full century for the United States Supreme Court to extend that practice to the entire nation by declaring in the famous Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 that the practice of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional. -
Plessy v. Ferguson decision. The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the state of Louisiana has the right to require "separate but equal" railroad cars for Blacks and whites. This decision means that the federal government officially recognizes segregation as legal. One result is that southern states pass laws requiring racial segregation in public schools. -
In June 1982, the Supreme Court issued Plyler v. Doe, a landmark decision holding that states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education on account of their immigration status.